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I want to be the Palestinian Romeo! Arna's Children and the Romance with Theatre1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2012

EMINE FISEK
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Abstract

This article focuses on Arna's Children, a 2004 documentary about the children's activities and theatre group founded in 1989 by Israeli activist Arna Mer Khamis in the Jenin Refugee Camp of the occupied West Bank. While the documentary provides an in-depth look at how theatrical practices can prove restorative in the face of destruction, my discussion suggests that its portrayal of the aesthetic medium also interrogates the limits of the relationship between theatrical practice and emancipatory ideals.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , July 2012 , pp. 104 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2012

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References

Notes

2 Arna's Children, DVD, dir. Juliano Mer Khamis and Danniel Danniel, Trabelsi Productions, 2004. The film's website is at www.arna.info/Arna

3 This quote, as well as all of the non-footnoted exchanges that follow, are citations from the documentary's English-language subtitles. My decision to focus on the subtitles does not elucidate the dynamics structuring the documentary's mother tongues (Arabic and Hebrew); however, it reflects my main concern: how the documentary connects theatrical practice and social transformation for a global audience.

4 Edmondson, Laura, ‘TDR Comment: Of Sugarcoating and Hope’, Drama Review, 51, 1 (2007), pp. 7–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 8.

5 Ibid., p. 9.

6 Many thanks to the anonymous reader who pointed me toward this relationship.

7 According to UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East), the refugee camp of Jenin, founded in 1953 within the municipal borders of the larger West Bank city of Jenin, covers approximately 0.42 square kilometre and currently houses 16,000 registered refugees. See www.unrwa.org/etemplate.php?id=118 for UNRWA's present-day statistics on life in the Jenin Refugee Camp (information retrieved 16 August 2011).

8 This language is borrowed from the DVD's ‘About Arna’ chapter.

9 Although the Mer Khamis theatre was destroyed during the Al Aqsa Intifada, Juliano Mer Khamis later served as general and artistic director of the Freedom Theatre of Jenin (www.thefreedomtheatre.org), founded in the refugee camp in 2006. Length restrictions do not permit an analysis of Mer Khamis's work within a broader landscape; however, for more information on contemporary Palestinian theatre in refugee camps and with children see Nassar, Hala K., ‘Stories from under Occupation: Performing the Palestinian Experience’, Theatre Journal, 58, 1 (2006), pp. 15–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For more on the development of Palestinian theatre and dramatic literature in the twentieth century see Snir, Reuven, Palestinian Theatre (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2005)Google Scholar.

10 I owe this observation and much gratitude to Nina Billone Prieur.

11 During the Al Aqsa Intifada, Jenin witnessed tremendous violence when the Israel Defense Forces entered the camp as a part of Operation Defensive Shield. During the approximately ten-day battle between Jenin's armed groups and the IDF and following the army's withdrawal, humanitarian aid groups and reporters were denied entry into the camp. In Derek Gregory's summary, ‘Thousands of homes had been destroyed; scores of bodies were buried beneath the ruins; 16,000 people had fled in terror, and those who remained were left to survive without running water or electricity’. Gregory, Derek, The Colonial Present (Malden and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), p. 116Google Scholar.

12 These excerpts are from an interview with Beshara Doumani on Voices of the Middle East and North Africa for KPFA Radio in Berkeley, California on 27 July 2005. Sound clip available at www.kpfa.org/archive/id/16173

13 Asad, Talal, On Suicide Bombing (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), p. 31Google Scholar.

14 Ibid., p. 40.

15 Ibid., p. 41.

16 It is perhaps this absence of interpretation that accounts for the documentary's uneven dissemination. Arna's Children was screened on university campuses, for academic conferences and through the international festival circuit, sharing the Best Documentary Feature Prize at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival, winning the Fipresci Prize at HotDocs in Canada and making the Official Selection at the 2003 International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam. The documentary's reception in Israel, on the other hand, was initially ‘silenced’, as Mer Khamis notes in a 2006 interview with Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, available at http://southissouth.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/art-is-freedom-without-force-interview-with-the-late-juliano-mer-khamis, retrieved 16 July 2011. It circulated through smaller venues and legwork on the part of Mer Khamis himself, eventually reaching wider audiences and generating a range of responses. It is worth noting that while his work in Jenin was significant to Juliano Mer Khamis's public persona in Israel, he was equally known for his work as a film actor, beginning with 1984's The Little Drummer Girl, and continuing with numerous Israeli films, including Amos Gitai's Kippur and Kedma and, most recently, Julian Schnabel's Miral.

17 While the eventual play that the workshop participants’ stage (and the workshop itself) are co-ed, the particular individuals in focus are all male. In the non-theatrical scenes, the documentary's women serve as powerful voices, yet they are almost always presented as maternal figures. The documentary does not comment on this gendering of theatrical activity, battle and martyrdom.

18 Jennings, Sue, Playtherapy with Children: A Practitioner's Guide (Oxford and Boston: Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1993), p. xGoogle Scholar.

19 For a detailed account of the role of containment in the psychoanalytic relationship see Bion, Wilfred R., Elements of Psychoanalysis (London: Karnac Books, 1984)Google Scholar.

20 Kuftinec, Sonja, Theatre, Facilitation, and Nation Formation in the Balkans and Middle East (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. 64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Ibid., p. 64.

22 Boal, Augusto, The Theatre of the Oppressed, trans. Charles, A. and McBride, Maria-Odilia Leal (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1985), p. 141Google Scholar.

23 Madison, D. Soyini, Acts of Activism: Human Rights as Radical Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 224CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Phelan, Peggy, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 148CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Schechner, Richard, Between Theater and Anthropology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), p. 38Google Scholar.

26 Edmondson, ‘TDR Comment’, p. 9. In her phrasing Edmondson is echoing a quotation from Michael Taussig.

27 Kuftinec, Theatre, Facilitation, and Nation Formation, p. 1.